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Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Our Massive Winter Wanderings...Part One

You may have noticed that this blog has been a bit silent lately. There are some good reasons for that, and some not-so-good reasons (namely, I simply cannot figure out a workable game plan for getting anything done lately), but there is one massive reason that I'm going to share over the next week or so.

Our family just returned from a huge, mega, outrageously crazy road trip.

Emphasis on the crazy.

This is the first year in many that we have been tied to a public school schedule, as Turtle is a freshman in our local high school this year. With her Spring Break coming up, it seems I may have been a bit frantic about making sure we made the most of our time off.

She got out of school at 1:40 on a Thursday, and we left town at 8:00 am Friday morning.

Just me and the kiddos (Daddy had to work, no way were the dogs either welcome or fitting in the car), and a car completely loaded down with everything on earth we could possibly need for this ten--yes, you read that right--TEN day road trip.

Ugh.

Well, ugh on the driving. And on the being away from home and hubby for so long. And on the single parenting. And definitely on the cold.

But YAY on the company, and the adventures, and the sightseeing, and the visiting, and the hugs and love and just overall wonderfulness that was our crazy road trip!

First things first. We left our home in Florida (where, may I say, it was over 80 degrees and sunny the ENITRE time we were gone...) and headed to stop number one: Maryland. I have a ton of aunts, uncles, and cousins all over the state, so we made this our first overnight stop.

12 hours later, we pulled into my aunt and uncle's driveway, where there was a minuscule amount of snow--SNOW--on the ground (which of course I can not find pictures of now...) And I had been made all too aware that my children were long overdue for a trip up north when my eight year-old asked, in the car on the way up, "Mom, what do you think happened to all of those trees? Was there like a fire or something?"

Because they had no leaves.

I had to explain to him that that's what winter looks like.

My apologies now to all of my readers who don't live in Florida.

After a brief romp in the one snow pile the kiddos found, we eagerly went inside, stretched out, and enjoyed not being in the car.

For a little while. Because after going to bed and waking up nice and early, it was time to get back in it again. For what I had thought was going to be a nice, easy 5-6 hour drive to Rhode Island.

Which somehow took me on a tour of Yankee Stadium that I KNOW wasn't on the original plan.

Notice the beautiful, sun-shiny weather?

Yeah. Ugh again.

We did finally make it to Newport, Rhode Island, just in time to see the remnants of the St. Patrick's Day parade still wandering through downtown. Think green dogs, green hats, green beads...

...and green people, who had been enjoying the festivities perhaps a bit too much!

Another lovely question from the back seat: "Mom, why is that man wearing a tiara?"

Yep. Seeing all the sights, we were!

BUT...we made it, and headed in to visit our very wonderful, very bestest friends who used to live so very close to us but moved so far away to Rhode Island last October. We had planned it to be a surprise to their kiddos, so the best part may have been my Bug ringing the doorbell and trying not to pee in his pants while waiting for his buddies to answer the door and be so completely surprised!!

It was a great surprise, and worked out just exactly like we hoped it would, full of bear hugs and laughter and even some screaming, and we settled in for a long overdue visit.

Of which I will post more as soon as I get another chance to sit down at this computer...